YouTube, the Internet’s favorite video service is getting a paid subscription model scheduled to release in the few coming months.
This new feature will provide an ad-free experience to its subscribed users, while forcing channel owners to accept new updated terms of service. Non-compliance or non-acceptance of the new terms will set all their videos to “private”, effectively hiding the channel’s content.
“If you choose not to participate in our new paid offerings, you can change your video settings to private to keep videos hosted on YouTube. Though you can always choose whether to host any or all of your videos on YouTube, we strongly believe that any fan who’s willing to pay for a feature like an ads-free experience on YouTube deserves to access the exact same content that exists on the ad-supported site.”
The information was announced in an email sent to video creators, highlighting the changes YouTube went through over the past year, and the consumers huge shift to mobile:
The new terms of service also indicate that YouTube will be keeping 45% of the revenues, sharing the remainder with channel owners according to their subscriber base. This move follows the release of “YouTube Music Key”, a service that offers both music and video streams, with the possibility of saving videos for offline viewing on mobile.
With this approach, Google plans to have a more direct competition with other paid streaming services like Netflix, or the newly debuted HBO Now. YouTube has not yet announced the cost of the subscription, but we can expect an official announcement over the next few months.
